A mastery model for Writing: moving away from the text type treadmill

Are we deceiving ourselves about cohesion? (Cartoon from xkcd.com/724)

I wrote back in the autumn of 2013 about how I found the endless march through text types to be ineffective in really securing children’s skills in Writing. I have spoken at several events since about how our perception of a joined-up curriculum in primary schools may not be conveyed as well as we like to the children we teach. We often build our writing tasks around a common topic or text and describe this as building a coherent curriculum, but too often the cohesion is in the topic, and not in the skill of writing. I have likened this in the past to trying to build a wall with bricks simply by dropping lots of randomly-shaped bricks and hoping they’ll fall into place.

This year, I have tried to improve on this model by bringing greater coherence to the curriculum for Writing. That doesn’t necessarily mean moving away from thematic teaching, nor necessarily moving away from using the text types. However, my intention has been to adopt some of the principles of the mastery model that I discussed in my original blog: focussing on fewer aspects of writing for a greater length of time.

Initially, this was based on identifying common strands through the units we were intending to teach (see details in first blog). Later, however, I began to adapt the text types we were using to ensure that we spent longer focussing on common strands. The idea here was to group the text types together slightly to ensure that we spend longer focussing on common features rather than racing through the various types hoping that some of the content we threw at the children would stick!

Our initial model ended up looking something like this:

Click to download PDF version

Over the course of the year we continued our usual units of study, with writing tasks adapted to focus on some common themes. Generally I would say that this has been a successful approach. I’m not convinced that it made any substantial difference to our progress in Writing this year, but I do think that the children have been – and will be – able to retain more of their knowledge of each of the genres, and so will be able to draw upon that knowledge more effectively in the future. One of my concerns of the race through the text types has been the lack of retention of the main features, meaning that almost every unit of work becomes a revision unit rather than developing further skill, at first at least.

As I approach the new year, however, I think there is more that could be done to develop this cohesion within and across year groups. Traditionally many schools have repeated the structure of the old Literacy framework by trying to get through many text types in each year, re-visiting regularly. My preference is to group the text types such that over the period of 6 weeks there are opportunities to learn and employ some of the key features. This has led me to a model based very loosely on the GCSE writing triplets:

Click to download PDF

I realise that this clear division into fiction and non-fiction blocks will fill some teachers with dread. Many teachers have a preference for one strand or the other, and so find the through of a whole half-term without their favoured type quite daunting. I can understand this, but our focus has to be on providing the most effective curriculum design to help our students to retain the key elements of learning.

The advantages of this approach are hopefully evident at least in part. By focussing on some common areas over a half-term, there are opportunities for students to experience, employ and adapt the various features and techniques being taught. Significantly, it will be possible to share with parents more detail of what is being covered in Writing, since the focus will be narrower. This also allows us to use target-setting more effectively, as students are able to learn from early pieces in the half-term and apply the target in the next piece. This replaces a system where too often children (particularly in upper KS2) have writing targets which are not particularly relevant to the text types/genres being taught.

Obviously this is just a broad example which doesn’t link directly to any topics or themes that are being taught. As with all models, it wouldn’t be possibly to transfer it wholesale from school to school because it would work best when properly aligned with the wider curriculum. However, hopefully it may provide an interesting discussion point for schools thinking about tackling the content of the new curriculum?

I won’t personally be making a KS1 model, as that’s definitely not my area of expertise, but I do hope to work with colleagues in my school on a similar approach over the coming year. Can’t promise anything imminently though, I’m afraid.
My suspicion is that a KS1 model would need even less content with more frequent repetition of core elements.

Not yet. I’ve talked about it with the KS1 team at my new school, but I shall have to follow their lead on how it works best for that age. I presume that there are fewer text types covered anyway, so it may just be a case of thinking about how the texts and styles you do use best complement each other?

[…] merits of a mastery approach that spends longer amounts of time on fewer things in both maths and English. I’ve never been a fan of the block-based approach that was put forward in the primary maths […]

I am really interested in your thoughts here. Have also read your post on ‘Is Mastery just for Maths’. We have been looking at developing a mastery approach in maths and I think I have a basic grip on how this will work. I have a maths background though and am struggling to understand how this will work in Literacy. Your two posts have been helpful but can you point to any further reading which would help us to understand the concept in both reading and writing?

I really like this idea. I was trained when the genres in English and blocks and units in maths were seen as the be-all and end-all, when I was quite certain that they weren’t.

I do believe in a spiral curriculum, but I very much like the idea of continuums and making real links between similar (and sometimes even different) threads of learning. This is how I’ve always taught English, with a focus on construction and impact rather than on distinct text types, and I can see how your model works in a similar way.

We need to get away from book trawls where the number of pieces of writing over a half term are counted and compared to the number of school days, and where leaders tick off the different genres covered over a period of time. More haste, less speed!

I would be really interested I seeing what your long term plan looks like. Would you be prepared to share it. I am all for intertextuality as I think it makes for better quit writing. However, how I plan and how my colleagues plan is worlds apart. There is no consistency in our school.
As I am now KS2 English Coordinator I’d like to make some changes that will help everyone have clarity and feel empowered.

Since the introduction of the new curriculum, I have been seeking to move away from a curriculum structure built on “text types” which, were arguably only ever artificial constructions towards a curriculum developed from the starting point of the purpose of the piece of writing. Although you do not mention purposes explicitly in this piece, It seems that your structure has this as an underlying feature. I also like longer units of work so that the children can write a series of pieces similar pieces, giving them an opportunity to recognise their developing skills and to identify similarities and subtle differences between good pieces created for different contexts or different audiences.

We do this in our school. I’m in year 4 and we spent 6 weeks teaching children to recount and the explored a range of text types such as diaries, letters, trip recounts. We taught them the recount skill and associated language, organisation and structure and they applied it through multiple opportunities to write recounts. We use this approach across all aspects of writing and it really develops the children as writers.

If these become available for other year groups I would love them! This looks like a good middle ground for my new school, where they won’t let me go full blown talk for writing, but realise that ‘the power of reading’ is not working. Too many text types, too little time!

I was just talking about this today – why not mastery for English as we know it in maths? Children need to truly understand concepts, not just plough on through the curriculum because that’s what comes next. I’ll use your planning ideas as a starting point, as I’m new to coordinating English, thank you!

This all makes sense. However, in real-life text is multi layered. Understanding intertextuality means that we teachers need to bring this to children’s attention. Then able writers won’t box up writing but instead take examples of texts apart through discussion. I think what we should be doing is asking children about what makes a particular piece of writing affect the reader . When they start to notice say , ‘cleverly manipulated reports delivered in the style of a traditional tale’ they will play with texts themselves. I don’t like any blocking at all.